Hearings for prominent clients accused of paying for sex at Mass. brothels will be public, SJC rules

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The initial court hearings for 28 “wealthy and well-connected” men accused of being customers of an interstate commercial sex ring that ran high-end brothels in two Bay State communities will be open to the public, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled Thursday.

The ruling from the state’s highest court upholds a previous decision from a Cambridge District Court clerk-magistrate.

In a 32-page filing, Chief Justice Scott L. Kafker wrote, “The clerk-magistrate acted reasonably and within the proper scope of her discretion in deciding to grant public access to the show cause hearings, based on her reasonable assessment that the Acting United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts’s announcements regarding the applications -- which indicated that the accused included unidentified government officials, corporate executives, and others in positions of power, wealth, and responsibility -- raised legitimate public concerns about potential favoritism and bias if such hearings were held behind closed doors.”

A pair of Boston-based media outlets had filed to view criminal complaints against the alleged clients of a prostitution ring, however, the SJC also sided with the clerk’s decision to keep the complaints sealed until the first show-cause hearings are held in Cambridge District Court.

“The pending complaint applications present the possible risk of unrestricted public disclosure of erroneous, extraneous, or incomplete information, in a manner unlike the decision to allow public access to the show-cause hearings that would not necessarily result in disclosure of the same,” Kafker wrote in his ruling.

The attorneys for the Boston-area “John Does” identified in the black books of the sophisticated interstate high-end brothel operation are desperately trying to keep their identities private, arguing that revealing their names violates their privacy.

Last year, acting Boston US Attorney Josh Levy said the clientele of the brothels included politicians, big pharma executives, government contractors with security clearances, professors, lawyers, accountants, and scientists.

In November 2023, authorities arrested Han Lee, Junmyung Lee, and James Lee on charges of running a commercial sex network in Watertown, Cambridge, and Virginia, where buyers paid up to $600 per hour for a wide array of advertised sex acts.

The three people arrested have since pleaded guilty to the charges.

Prosecutors said the three charged sex buyers a premium price for appointments with women advertised on their websites. Buyers paid anywhere from $350 to upwards of $600 per hour for sex, depending on the services. They paid in cash.

To conceal the proceeds of the prostitution network, Han Lee deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash proceeds into personal and third-party bank accounts and peer-to-peer transfers, prosecutors said. Hundreds of thousands of dollars from these proceeds were used to buy money orders to conceal the source of the funds.

These money orders were then used to pay for rent and utilities at brothel locations in Massachusetts and Virginia, prosecutors said.

Websites advertising nude models for professional photography at upscale studios served as a front for the prostitution ring, prosecutors said.

Investigators searched and seized the domain names for the websites after obtaining search warrants that were executed in November 2023.

Each website had a verification process for interested sex buyers to become eligible for appointment bookings, prosecutors said.

Clients were required to complete a form providing their full names, email addresses, phone numbers, employers, and references if they had one.

The clerk magistrate’s initial decision was issued on Dec. 21, 2023, but it was met with a slew of appeals.

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